Over the past few weeks, Tara and I (mostly Tara) have been working on tiling the laundry room. It started months ago when we installed the hardwood, and pulled up the ugly linoleum on the downstairs landing. It remained that way for months, and just recently we started the laundry room.

We went with a porcelain, cream/tan colored tile. 13″x13″. About $1.19/sq ft at the local hardware store.

After pulling out the washer and dryer, and pulling the base boards, we pulled up the linoleum. Tara scraped off most of the old glue, and we started working on caulking under the drywall to prevent the self leveler from oozing out under it. During that, we discovered that the drywall right under the washer drain spout was rotted out (well, dissolved out), probably due to the drain backing up and water pouring out and getting under the drywall. So, we cut out that bad drywall and found mold (big surprise). We cut out probably a 3’x4′ chunk, and replaced it, taped, mudded, textured. Painted (later). Looks good.

So, after that, we poured self leveler since the room wasn’t very flat. There’s kind of a “hump” in the middle of the room. After one bag worth, we saw the hump was still there, so we mixed and poured another bag worth. The hump was still there, but much better. And we didn’t want to spend another $30 on a bag that will just raise the floor even more. So, we called it good.
Tara basically did all the tiling herself. She mixed the thinset, cut the tile (with a wonderfully handy tile saw we borrowed from her uncle). She basically did it all while I was at work. Tilesaw works great… except when you don’t have the blade shield all the way down and water sprays all over the front of your pants… but I digress.

Next came grouting, which is a tedious process, but might be easier if the grout was a bit thinner. I mixed it a bit thick, so it really took some elbow grease to work in. Then you wipe it down, and seal it a few days later. All of this went pretty well. The only thing I didn’t look forward to was trimming the doors to make room for the extra 1/2 of tile, thinset, and self leveler. But, all and all, that went quite well as well.

And we’re done! we put the washer and dryer back, all the various holes in the walls have been sealed (you know, where the valves for the washer water come through, or the dryer exhaust, etc. Hopefully the laundry room will stay a bit warmer now. Heck, we even bought nice new hoses for the washer (did you know you’re supposed to replace the hoses every 5 years???). Really, the only thing left is to finish the new baseboard, and sometime down the road, get a laundry sink/basin installed (which we’ll have a plumber do, and probably run us a few hundred).

With Tara’s family coming down this weekend, we’re now in rapid cleaning mode. I also need to install a new lav faucet in the guest bathroom, which I’ll probably do tonight. That’s easy plumbing…